


The Queen's Gambit

by orphan_account



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV), 킬링 스토킹 | Killing Stalking (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, Female Yoon Bum, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:21:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27411886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Pawn, Rook, Bishop, Knight, Queen, King.” Then he reaches out, folding up her Queen in his great big hand, and then he holds it in his palm, showing it to her. “The Queen is your strongest piece. Take care of it.”—OR the one where Bum is a chess prodigy and an orphan and lots of things are hard but falling in love with Sangwoo is easy, even when he's mean.KNOWLEDGE OF THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT (TV) NOT NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND THIS FIC
Relationships: Oh Sangwoo/Yoon Bum, Yoon Bum & William Shaibel
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	1. Alone Save for a Game

**Author's Note:**

> No chapter warnings this time folks! I hope you enjoy~

Yoon Bum was 8, small and tired and in the back seat of her parent’s car, sleeping off a long day at the park. She'd been dreaming of fish in the pond, chasing one another’s tails in search of food, when her world came to an abrupt and painful halt.

They say it’s a miracle she lived, but disoriented from exhaustion and the acrid smell of burned rubber and something she didn't recognize at the time as human material. Skin, nails, hair, burning just the same way as the rubber of the tires and the leather of the seats. Bum isn’t sure what to think. Isn’t sure she understands what’s happening at all. 

Death is a foreign concept, something her mother tried to explain, stumbling over her words with and eventually patting Bum on the head, saying, _don’t worry, Gonjunim, it’s not important_. It had been reassuring, then, when confusion over such a small thing had been the most of her problems, but now she wishes she had understood her mother’s words. It seems vitally important now, and the woman driving the car keeps trying to explain that her mother has _passed on_. Passing on and death seem to go hand in hand, but Bum isn’t sure if they’re the same, or just similar and different in ways she can’t comprehend. In the end, though, she remembers that her mother always told her "asking too many questions is considered impolite," so she doesn’t ask any at all, hands folded neatly in her lap and shoulders hunched in.

Her hair curtains her face, long and hanging well past her waist, obscuring her vision where it drapes over her shoulders, but she’s glad for it. There’s nothing in the passing scenery that she wants to see, not when the only thing consuming her thoughts is wheb she can see her mom or her dad. She wants to know when they’ll be back. The woman driving is fat and smells strongly of perfume and she talks too much about things Bum doesn’t really understand, but every time she finishes a statement she keeps asking if she does, understand that is, and Bum is too nervous to say _no_ so instead she just hums a vague affirmative, her thumbs pressing into each other.

When silence begins to drag on, Bum works up her courage. She only asks for her mother and father once, voice just shy of pleading, but the fat woman tries again to explain, gently and not very clearly, that she won’t be able to see her mother and father again. It's hurtful and confusing and for a moment it seems that Bum is almost too sad to cry, chest tight like its fit to burst without an outlet, but then that moment passes and small tears work down her cheeks. A valve to release the pressure building in her heart.

She doesn’t bother trying to wipe them up, letting her cheeks be wet. Her mother would chastise her for rubbing her cheeks too raw if she did, and from now on she’d have to behave extra well, just in case her mom decided to come back for her.

When she unloads from the car the driver woman gives her a warm smile and a ‘ _good luck, my dear_ ,’ signalling the end of their time in one another's company, before a woman in a dark green dress with prim brown curls swoops in, looking all a predator in a way that makes Bum want to hide her face in her hair again. But predator or now, Bum follows the woman dutifully when she’s instructed, and looks around the school-house looking building that she learns, shortly, is an orphanage.

 _Orphanage_ , it’s an unfamiliar term that she quickly learns means ‘a place for children without parents’ and she despises it, at first, because she _does_ have parents. But she promised herself she would behave, because if she did then her mother would come back and prove this hawkish woman wrong, so she says nothing, hands folding in front of her as she holds her tongue. Methuen’s Home for Orphans. The woman’s name is Miss Deardorff, and she comments with a smile that "Chinese kids are so uncommon in this part of America," with a dreamy sort of expression that makes Bum just nod reluctantly.

She’s not Chinese, but Miss Deardorff, for all that she frightens and frustrates Bum, doesn’t seem to be trying to be mean. She’s just speaking matter-a-factly, even though she’s wrong. 

Miss Deardorff doesn’t introduce her to anyone, but she shows the her bed she’ll sleep in from now on. It’s on the far side of the room filled with other beds, not tucked into the corner but close. Just beside the bathroom, which Miss Deardorff says is good because then she doesn’t have to trek too far to use it at night. Except Bum learns later that night, after putting her raggedy, stiff doll with red braids on her bed and stuffing her few clothes in her small, rusty drawer, that when the toilets flush it sounds like a rushing river, for just a moment. Then there’s this quiet bubbling noise that lasts just long enough to be distracting but not long enough to grow used to.

Bum never mentions the noise, though, even when it keeps her up for long stretches of the night, and Miss Deardorff praises her for being well mannered and never causing a fuss. 

There's a black girl named Jolene who sleeps in the bed beside her own, and who informs her in the morning, when they’re alone, not impolitely but directly, that she’ll never get adopted. “These white folks,” she says, leaning in like it’s a secret, “they ain’t want a coloured kid. They want a white kid, and young too. You might be young enough, but you ain’t white enough.” 

It might seem like a mean thing to say, but she says it kindly, and then she offers Bum a cigarette that Bum shakes her head quickly to, murmuring out, “thank you for offering,” in the way her mother taught her to, even though she wonders where the older girl got something like that in the first place. Jolene just laughs and musses up her hair, but her hand is warm and Bum smiles her first reluctant, small smile since the last time she saw her parents. 

She doesn’t much want to be adopted anyway. Eventually, she’s sure, as long as she behaves, her parents will come back for her.

Days pass the same at Methuen, so similar it’s hard to tell them apart. Wake up, make your bed, brush your teeth, brush your hair, bathe every other day, get dressed, get your vitamins, get your breakfast. Eat, put away your tray. Then classes, every day, first arithmetic, then reading, then gym. Then supper, and finally bed. The routine is easy to slip into, but apathy drains the color from her days, though she doesn’t know the meaning of the world. It infects her with a dull lifelessness that makes every day drag and every night seem infinitely long. There are so many days that pass her by that she hardly remembers, like living life on repeat.

There’s time in between the repetition, minor differences in her loop, like talking to Jolene or reading an interesting book, and in that in between time Yoon Bum learns what death is. It’s been long enough by then, months of aching for her parents day in and day out, that she’s not even very sad when she finally understands. As if she no longer has the capacity for real sadness, and instead can only experience this dulled down version of it that aches dully but little else. Still, though, when she lies in bed that night, surrounded by other orphans, she cries. Too-many tears streaking her cheeks where she rubs at them freely, now, until her cheeks are ruddy and raw, because her mother won’t be coming back. Her mother won’t ever be here to chastise her for rubbing her cheeks, and her father won’t ever kiss her forehead when she stops finally crying. 

She’s alone, with no one to love her, and the only person who really seems to care tells her she’s _trapped_.

When morning has come the tears are gone. Even Jolene doesn’t complain. Even though the older girl complains about most things in their life, even over the pizza they eat every Thursday, but when morning arrives she doesn’t complain about Bum’s tears for just that one night. She doesn’t offer comfort either, doesn’t offer much of anything except another cigarette and a sideways look, neither of which Bum accepts.

In the night, though, while she still cries, Jolene watches from the other bed, her dark eyes unreadable in the dim light of the room. And eventually, when Bum’s cries simmer to nothing but wet sniffles, Jolene gets up, quiet as a mouse, sure and steady as though she’s done it a million times, and goes to the bathroom, bringing back a damp rag for her to wipe her face with.

Jolene doesn’t like talking about things like crying or about sadness or grief, like never mentioning them means they don't affect her, so they never talk about it, and no one tells Miss Deardorff. Bum knows because Miss Deardorff never asks, and that woman seems desperate to stick her nose in their affairs.

After that, months pass as easily as days, hurt over her mother and father fading into the background, and Bum becomes 1 year older as July comes and passes. 9 years old. Then another year, where kids come and go but Jolene and Bum stay. 10 years old.

Eventually Mr. Shaibel comes to work at Mithuen. He’s a janitor with a sour face, like he's perpetually sucking on lemons, and a big mole on his cheek. He frightens Yoon Bum when they first see one another in the basement.

He doesn’t seem to care much for her, or perhaps he just doesn’t care at all. He only seems to notice her because of the sound when she cleans the erasers. The repetitive _whap, whap, whap_ over the sink. She shrinks under his gaze, when he looks her way, but when he looks away again she follows his eyes toward the game. 64 squares, 32 white, 32 black, all checkered across the board. 

Mr. Shaibel always plays alone, eyes focused on his game, and he always moves the white pieces first. 

Yoon Bum doesn’t mean to, not really, but she memorizes the way each piece moves. There’s the most of the smallest one, eight in each color, and can only move forward 1 square, never diagonal or backwards, only forward. They usually get removed quickest. The next one looks like castle walls, but there’s 2 in each color, and can move as far as it likes, forward, back, left, or right, when there’s nothing in it’s way. 

Then there’s the horse. It’s Bum’s favorite, because that one, at least, she can tell what it’s meant to be. Two in each color, just like the last one, but the movement on this one was the hardest to understand. It can move how it likes, forward, back, left, or right, but then it has to move perpendicular to the way it moved before. One move up or down, one move left or right. No diagonals, no straights. One move each way. 

Two of the piece with a strange chip out of it, but it’s like that on each one of that size, so she figures it must be _meant_ to be like that. It looks like you could slot a coin inside it, and she thinks to try, but doesn’t know when she’ll get the chance. It only moves on diagonals, as far as it likes as long as it’s not obstructed. It rarely takes pieces off the table, though, and she wonders how useful it really is. 

The tallest are the ones with the crowns and the onse with the crosses. Only one of each in each color. The crown can move as far as it likes on any straight or diagonal, it can go almost anywhere on the board, but the one with the cross is what decides the game. If the cross is taken, the game is lost. It can move any direction, but only one space. 

She wonders if they have names. They must, she thinks, but Mr. Shaibel is so quiet, never talking when she’s down there, cleaning erasers, even though she’s down there almost every day. 

One day, when he catches her watching, she asks, soft and shy, before she can think better of it, “could you show me how to play, please?”

His words are cold and final. Simple. “I don’t play with strangers.”

She leaves after that, feet taking her quickly up the stairs and out of the basement, because her nerves are frayed from exchanging only those few words. But the next day, same as the day before, she finishes her school work early and heads to the basement with the erasers, sent to clean them by Miss Kirk. On this day, there’s a small, rickety chair across from Mr. Shaibel. Again, just like before, he doesn’t acknowledge her. 

Only once the erasers are clean does she look his way, her shoe scuffing along the ground and her hands locked behind her back as she works up her nerve. It takes her a short while, but eventually she says, swallowing tightly before speaking, “My name is Yoon Bum, but people just call me Bum. The boys laugh about it.” She flushes, because she understands _why_ they make fun of her, now, even though she hadn’t when she first came. 

Her hair had been chopped short, but it’s soft and straight and still curtains her face, at least a bit, when she drops her head. “We’re not strangers anymore, right?” because she shared. Another dull noise as she scruffs her shoe along the checkered linoleum, like the board but so much larger and without any pieces.

When she glances up, Mr. Shaibel isn’t smiling, but he’s gesturing quietly to the chair across from himself, and she scurries over, quick as she can, erasers abandoned at the edge of the sink. Mr. Shaibel begins correcting his pieces back to their starting places, and she mimics him, though her hands shake as she does so. Excitement, but also nerves. None of the teachers are men, only Mr. Fergusson, the black man who hands out vitamins in the morning, and he has a much kinder face than Mr. Shaibel. “What’s the game called,” Bum asks, hushed, hoping she won’t break whatever spell allowed her to sit with the janitor and be allowed to play. 

He seems almost surprised by her question, and answers slowly, like he’s not sure she was making a joke, “Chess.” And Bum only nods, her shoulders up around her ears, “Do you know the pieces?” Mr. Shaibel asks, his fingers resting on the smallest piece. 

Bum shakes her head, then after a second of hesitation, recounts how the pieces move, pointing to each one as she goes. “I learned from watching,” she tells him, embarrassment clear in her voice. She’d been watching him whenever he wasn’t looking, but that’s the sort of thing the girls do to boys they _like_ . But she doesn’t like Mr. Shaibel, or, at least, not like she wants to kiss him. Not like the girls like the boys they watch. “Do the pieces have names?” she asks quickly, eager to escape the bright flush spreading from her cheeks down her chest at the thought of kissing _anyone_ let alone old Mr. Shaibel. 

“You know the way they move, but not their names?” He seems to think that’s funny, or maybe astonishing. He almost seems like he’s smiling, even though his lips barely move. He answers her question, though, pointing to the pieces like she had, naming them as he goes. “Pawn, Rook, Bishop, Knight, Queen, King.” Then he reaches out, folding up her Queen in his great big hand, and then he holds it in his palm, showing it to her. “The Queen is your strongest piece. Take care of it.” 

When she nods and holds up her hand, he presses the piece into her palm, and uses his fingers to curl her hand shut around it. He seems kinder with his actions than he does with his expressions. Conservative in all things but his love for chess.

When they finally play she loses quickly. Hands trembling as her King falls. It almost brings tears to her eyes, but she just shakes her head silently and resets her pieces, giving him big pleading eyes until he resets his pieces, too. They play again and she loses just as quickly the second time, and this time she _does_ cry, bottom lip sucked into her mouth and tears slipping down her cheeks that she rubs away with rough hands.

Mr. Shaibel doesn’t chastise her for making her cheeks ruddy, but he does suggest they wait to play again until tomorrow.


	2. Chess, Chess, Chess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings for this chapter! I hope you enjoy!

She goes down to the basement when tomorrow finally comes, just like every day, but unlike every day before when she arrives she has no erasers. None of the usual excuses at all. Miss Kirk, the math teacher, who usually sends her, had asked her instead to tutor one of the younger boys, and Bum had complied, trying for all herself not to seem too downtrodden. 

It was when lunch came that she rushed downstairs. They’d note her absence from the dining hall, but no one would worry too much. No consequences save for light chastisement, and Mr. Shaibel and Chess were far more important than lunch or propriety. No one except Jolene would even look for her, except perhaps to scold her for losing even more weight. Food and sleep had lost so much of their appeal in the years since her parent’s death, she picked at her food and laid awake all night. 

Miss Deardorff says she worries that Bum’s depressed, but Bum shakes her head politely whenever Miss Deardorff says so. She’s not depressed, she’s just… stuck. Trapped here, in the inbetween. 

Today Mr. Shaibel doesn’t make her wait, he looks up as soon as she stumbles off the last step, and gives her a look that almost seems warm before gesturing once again to the table and the chess board along with it.

Today, they create a new routine. One they practice together. 

Today, Mr. Shaibel begins teaching her.

They meet almost every day, whenever Bum can make it out of class-- and ultimately it seems much more real when  _ he _ chastises her for missing meals. He says he won’t allow her to play if she loses any more weight, and her heart nearly stops beating in her chest before she assures him, stumbling over her words, that she’d be good, she’ll eat every meal every day; and she is. She doesn’t gain much weight, she never can, her ribs always standing out and her stomach area just a bit hollow, but she doesn’t lose any either. 

Miss Deardorff tells her she’d be prettier with some more fat on her bones, but Mr. Shaibel never mentions it, so Bum figures it must not be too important. 

Learning Chess is a tedious process. It’s difficult, and it makes her cry more often than not when she loses to Mr. Shaibel, but slowly the miraculous happens. She begins losing less and less, memorizing the right responses when Mr. Shaibel moves his pieces, learning to look further and further ahead. It begins making sense to her, this whole world encapsulated in only 64 squares. It’s so simple, yet complex, telling so many stories and yet none at all. It begins making more sense, this small and infinitely complex world, than the world she lives in.

The time comes, eventually, when she’s not losing anymore except when she does so intentionally- even though she flushes, red and embarrassed, when Mr. Shaibel points it out- he gives her a book. It has a hundred chess boards gridded along it’s pages, and instructions. “They’re different openings, defenses and attacks,” he explains to her, “I can only teach you so much, I think this is what you really need.” His large hand taps the side of her head, and she flushes again, looking down so her short hair hides her face, albeit ineffectually. She’d told him how she practices her games inside her head, how she imagines playing against herself again and again, and he’d seemed astonished. He’d looked at her for several long seconds, before laughing, one heavy huff, and mussing her hair.

Bum doesn’t mind when he musses her hair. It always used to be messy, when she was younger and felt free to be wild, content in her parent’s love, but at Methuen they’re strict. Your hair must be straight and evenly cropped to frame your face just below the ears, if you’re a girl, and cut with short sides and with a combed top if you’re a boy. 

There are much fewer boys than girls at Methuen, and most are older or black. Jolene says it’s because people always want to adopt young white boys first, and young white girls second, and everyone else is chopped liver. Bum doesn’t know what  _ chopped liver _ is supposed to mean, but she garners that it means less worthy.

At least none of the boys bother her. No one besides Jolene even speaks to Yoon Bum except her teachers, Miss Deardorff, and Mr. Shaibel, but the girls speak  _ about _ her. They whisper to one another, then giggle, or sometimes outright laugh. Bum doesn’t ask what they’re laughing about, or why their smiles seem nearly viscous. It doesn’t seem worth asking, even though it hurts her feelings, not when she’s learning Chess with Mr. Shaibel. Chess makes everything else seem… like chopped liver.

When she’s 11, not long after her birthday, Mr. Shaibel brings a man she doesn’t know to the basement. The man’s name, she learns, is Mr. Ganz. He’s from the chess club that Mr. Shaibel plays at, and he’s taken an interest in her. 

She hadn’t known Mr. Shaibel played with a club. 

“I’m also the coach for the high school team. Duncan High?” Mr. Ganz offers her his hand, and his hands are almost as big as Mr. Shaibel’s, though more slender, and still altogether dwarf her own when she offers it shyly. He just squeezes her hand and gives it the smallest shake. His smile is nice, and it doesn’t seem fake at all like some of the smiles the teachers give her. It’s so real that when imagining it in contrast to Miss Deardorff’s stiff, predatory smile, she almost laughs.

Mr. Ganz just seems pleased to have pleased her, albeit he also seems confused, casting a look back toward Mr. Shaibel where he stands against the wall, before returning his smile to Yoon Bum and gesturing at the board. “Join me for a game?”

She gives him a nod so quick it feels like her head might fall off, and she presses her hands to her hot cheeks, embarrassed by her enthusiasm, before giving a more reserved nod, “Y-yes. Please.” A game against someone besides Mr. Shaibel sounds amazing, not that Mr. Shaibel isn’t an amazing partner, she’s just happy for the change.

She chooses white, because Mr. Ganz lets her choose, and she starts with an opening from her book. Her knight, forward over a pawn, and to the left one square. Mr. Ganz smiles- he seems full of smiles and warmth, he reminds her of her mother, almost, but he’s far too white and not pretty enough by half. 

“Ah,” he says, sounding appreciative. “The Retí Opening.” 

Bum nods, pressing her cold hand to her hot cheeks once again, offering him small, hesitant smiles each time she moves her pieces. 

Mr. Ganz isn’t as good as Mr. Shaibel, she learns as they play. The game is locked in 6 turns, and mate in 3 more. She’s barely able to stutter it out, words whisper quiet as she says, “m-mate in… three,” worried over what his reaction will be, and Mr. Ganz seems surprised, but not upset. Gesturing for her to continue, so she takes over both sides of the board, playing it out as it would happen. There are escape routes Mr. Ganz could take, but they would only delay the inevitable by one or two turns. His surprise only seems to grow, until finally she checks his King, and the following turn is mate.

“Well,” he sounds impressed, and she glances up, her Queen in her hand, and blushes even darker before looking down again, “you certainly know the game, young lady. Do you have a team here?” 

Yoon Bum looks toward Mr. Shaibel, who only watches passively, before looking back and shaking her head, teeth drawing her bottom lip into her mouth. “No, Mr. Ganz,” her hands drop to her lap, Queen being fiddled between her fingers. He asks her, then, where she plays, sounding confused. “Just down here, Mr. Ganz.” 

And she feels, more than sees, him looking toward Mr. Shaibel, who’s shrug she can see from the corner of her vision. He asks her  _ who do you practice with? _ And she shrugs, just like Mr. Shaibel had, and tells him, “No one, Mr. Ganz, only with Mr. Shaibel. The rest of the time I just… play in my head.”

He sounds unsure when he tells her, “That’s very impressive, Miss Yoon,” as though he doesn’t quite believe her. But she can’t help her small, flattered smile nonetheless. People so rarely compliment her on anything except how quiet she is, or how skinny. It feels nice for someone to appreciate her capability rather than her demurity. 

“Thank you,” she tells him, giving a small bow. 

They play another game, and the next one ends just as quickly, Mr. Ganz conceding with grace, but it’s getting late, and her class will be ending soon, so she sets down her Queen after she wins and looks toward Mr. Shaibel, eyes wide and a bit pleading, “may I return to class, now, Mr. Shaibel?”

The janitor is nodding when Mr. Ganz reels back as though struck and exclaims, “One moment, Miss Yoon!” before he’s digging through his bag for something, presents it to her after a moment. A long blue rectangular box with a pink silk bow tied around it. “A gift. For you. I hope you like it Miss Yoon.”

She unties the silk with slow, delicate fingers, pulling one thread taut until it gives and the rest of the bow unravels, falling away. She sets the lid aside, and lifts out the contents in reverent hands, casting eyes up in questioning wonder. 

“This is too nice,” she murmurs, feeling soft fabric between her fingers and porcelain under her thumb. Painted pretty features staring back at her from a blonde haired doll dressed in pink satin and silk. “T-thank you, Mr. Ganz, you’re-” there’s a moment's deliberation before she throws her arms around him, doll hanging by its arm in one of her hands as she hugs him. 

“Oh!” Mr. Ganz’s arms are warm, when they wrap around her, and his low quality suit is similar to the ones she can remember her father wearing, a bit rough against her cheek. “Well you’re very welcome, Miss Yoon,” he says, warm as anything she’s ever heard, before his hands grasp her shoulders and push her back just far enough that they can look at one another again, his kind smile even warmer than his hug or his words. “But you’d best be returning to class, hadn’t you? I’m sure we’ll see one another again soon enough.”

She smiles, wide and less nervous than she had been, at Mr. Ganz, then directs it for a moment toward Mr. Shaibel, before giving a quick wave and darting back up the stairs, her doll in hand as she goes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE CHECK OUT MY WONDERFUL BETA GRAVITREN ON AO3!!!
> 
> See you guys next week~

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to update weekly or biweekly (twice a week), and it's all up to you guys! Depending on how many comments I get telling me to do which~ 
> 
> PLEASE CHECK OUT MY WONDERFUL BETA GRAVITREN ON AO3!!! 
> 
> See you guys next week~


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